Analysis & Opinion

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has been admitted to Washington's Walter Reed Army medical center for what an aide called a "routine procedure," media reports said on Tuesday.

Dole, 89, "self-checked into the hospital for a routine procedure and will be discharged tomorrow," an aide told NBC News. "He's doing very well."

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday that Dole was hospitalized "because he is infirm. He is sick."

Reid's comments came during debate on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Dole, who was severely wounded during World War Two, had sent a letter to the Senate urging passage.

Dole, a former Senate majority leader from Kansas, lost the 1996 presidential election to Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton. Dole served as a senator from 1969 to 1996.